UMBC and The Hilltop Institute are pleased to announce that Cynthia H. Woodcock has been named Hilltop’s next executive director. An MBA by training, Ms. Woodcock’s managerial skills span organizational development, strategic planning, marketing and new business development, system design, and financial management. She has designed and managed research projects and authored issue briefs for the federal government, states, and foundations on the delivery and financing of long-term services and supports (LTSS), chronic disease management, and preventing childhood obesity.

Woodcock was most recently a principal research associate and practice area lead for long-term care, aging, and disability at IMPAQ International, LLC. She was responsible for new business development and management of engagements with clients such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Administration for Community Living. Her career of more than 30 years also includes work as a principal and partner of a private consulting firm, the director of program development for the International Life Sciences Institute, and service in philanthropy as an assistant vice president with the Commonwealth Fund and, early in her career, a program assistant with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Woodcock knows Hilltop well, as she was on staff from 2004 until 2011. First, as a senior research analyst, she worked with the executive director on new business development and managed a major contract with the New Mexico Human Services Department. She then moved to the LTSS unit to conduct health policy research and analysis and later advanced to be the director of that unit.

“I am delighted to welcome Cynthia Woodcock back to UMBC as the next executive director of Hilltop,” said Dr. Antonio Moreira, UMBC’s Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. “Ms. Woodcock’s broad knowledge of the health care sector and her past experience with Hilltop and UMBC make her a very exciting choice to take the helm at Hilltop at this stage moving forward.”

“Hilltop’s mission and work in state health policy are very much aligned with my professional interests and career goals,” Woodcock stated. “Hilltop will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary and I am excited to have the opportunity to lead the organization into the future.” Woodcock will begin her appointment on March 4.

For more information, contact Marsha Willis at mwillis@hilltop.umbc.edu.

Karsonya “Kaye” Whitehead ’09, Ph.D. LLC, was one of four experts chosen nationwide to speak on the White House’s Black History Month panel held this month. C0-sponsored by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the event tackled the topic “At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington.”

Whitehead is an assistant professor of communication and affiliate assistant professor of African and African American history at Loyola University Maryland. She told Loyola’s news group:

“It’s difficult for me to express in words how honored I am to have been part of something so substantively relevant to our ongoing dialogue about African American history,” said Whitehead. “This is a historic year, with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation and the 50th anniversary of both the March on Washington and Dr. King’s release of the ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ and it is a good time to have these types of discussions and connect them to some of the issues that we are grappling with today.”

Read the full story from Loyola here.

From the UMBC Alumni Blog: Read a Q&A with Whitehead about what it’s like becoming a college professor.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, discussed Maurice Sendak’s posthumously-published “My Brothers Book” in a column for The New Republic.  Spitz writes that while the book is “unintelligible as a story, mostly unoriginal as art, [and] emotionally distant,” it “may send us back to Sendak’s other work with new critical insights.”

Spitz notes that one aspect of Sendak’s life that has not been analyzed is his sexuality; Sendak was gay. “’My Brother’s Book’ offers us a chance to return to Sendak’s prodigious body of complex, fascinating, sometimes troubling work and reexamine it through lenses that have not yet been tried. When an artist’s sexuality, or indeed any other core aspect of his identity, is denied public acceptance and affirmation, that denial cannot but find its way into his work,” Spitz writes.

“Although ‘My Brother’s Book’ is ostensibly an elegy for Sendak’s brother Jack, who died in 1995, Guy may well represent [Sendak’s parter] Glynn as well, who died in 2007. Jack and Guy seem to love each other with an overweening passion. We see them nude or draped in gossamer cloths but minus clearly identifiable male genitalia.” writes Spitz. “The loneliness and occasional anger of Sendak’s protagonists may be another element of his work that suggests the as yet unexamined influence of his sexuality.”

“In a time of growing tolerance, we may anticipate a reconsideration spearheaded by this final work, the one in which Maurice Sendak says his farewell to a life that was not always kind to him,” Spitz concludes.

The piece, “Maurice Sendak’s Sexuality,” appeared online on February 21.

As criticism emerges surrounding a $758,000, no-bid contract the city of Cleveland awarded to a Texas company for a racial disparity study, The Plain Dealer asked UMBC professor George La Noue, political science and public policy, for his take on the situation. La Noue is director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracting.

The newspaper says La Noue believes Cleveland’s study is the most expensive study to-date of a city’s race- and gender-based contracting programs and legitimate studies can be done for as little as $250,000. “Typically these studies overwhelm the cities’ capacity to understand them,” La Noue said. “They’re too long and complex. City Council members are not going to read them. A mayor is not going to have time. But it’s like buying an insurance policy. If you’ve spent enough money and have a long enough study, your program will stand up pretty well against a court challenge.”

La Noue went on to delineate what he perceives as flaws in the study’s methodology. Read the full article for details.

Photographs from associate professor of visual arts, Lynn Cazabon’s project Uncultivated will be on display in the exhibition, Ecological Reflections: Artistic Collaborations with the Long Term Ecological Research Network, at the National Science Foundation (NSF) headquarters in Arlington, VA. The exhibition features the work of artists who have produced art work in collaboration with NSF’s Long Term Ecological Network sites. Cazabon was the 2012 Artist-in-Residence for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study.

Ecological Reflections will be on display February 28 through June 15. Find out more about the exhibition at the NSF’s website.

Earlier this week, a security research company released a report providing technical documentation and near-certain proof that China is engaging in cyber-espionage activities against the US.  While that’s not exactly a new discovery, it provided a much deeper degree of public information used in presenting its findings.

On Public Radio International’s program, The World UMBC’s Rick Forno discussed the report’s implications.

Forno says he was on the program to discuss American cybersecurity readiness in light of the heightened media interest in cybersecurity following the report’s release.

The fact that the networks and our critical infrastructure systems are still vulnerable after years of analysis and public warnings about their security posture said Forno, “is still very disturbing.”

“Those systems that we view as critical national infrastructures [such as those controlling power and water distribution] he said, “should be separated from the public internet.” But he adds, “When rubber meets the road [in terms of American cybersecurity] I don’t see a lot of improvements.”

The U.S.,” he said, “has the most vulnerable cybersecurity infrastructure on the planet.”

Listen to the interview 

Beginning this month, Catonsville’s David Mikow Art Gallery will host the first in-person exhibition of the online publication, The Light Ekphrastic, featuring collaborative works of literature, poetry and fine art by UMBC faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Join the Ekphrastic team this Friday, February 22 for a special opening event from 5-7 p.m., with informal discussion taking place at 6 p.m.

Exhibiting writers and artists from the UMBC community include:
Sara Abbott (former staff), Richard Byrne ’86, English (UMBC Magazine), Dayna Carpenter (OIA), Marlayna Demond ’11, visual arts (Creative Services), Vin Grabill (Visual Arts), Katie Heater ’09, visual arts (current MFA student), Michelle Jordan ’93, visual arts (Creative Services), Chris Justice (current Ph.D. student), Dina Karkar (Creative Services), Jim Lord ’99, visual arts (Creative Services), Meredith Purvis (OIA), Jackie Regales ’00, American studies, and others.

Published since November 2009 and edited by Jenny O’Grady, director of alumni and development communications, The Light Ekphrastic is a quarterly online journal dedicated to the creation of new written and visual artworks through collaboration between artists. The evening will include an informal discussion with artist/writer pairs about their ekphrastic processes — the methods by which they produce new works inspired by the work of their creative partners.

The David Mikow Gallery is located at 1002 Vineyard Hill Road, Catonsville, MD 21228. Find more information about the David Mikow Art Gallery, operated by Carolyn Forestiere, political science, at its website, or via its feature in the Winter 2013 edition of UMBC Magazine.

Light refreshments will be served.

Earlier this month UMBC’s chess team was formally recognized on the floor of the Maryland State Senate and the House with a citation from Speaker Pro Tem, Delegate Adrienne Jones ’76, psychology.

The UMBC team then played a friendly match with the members of the Maryland General Assembly Chess Challenge.

“It was a great experience to be recognized by the House of Senate and the House of Delegates. After being awarded we ended up playing for about two hours games with some of the senators, said Sabina Foisor, a member of the team and a graduate student at UMBC.

“We all had a good time and hope to be able to do it again,” said Foisor.

The UMBC chess team recently tied for first place in the Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, advancing to the 2013 President’s Cup, known as the “Final Four” of chess.

The UMBC chess team headed into the 2012 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship with a record nine titles to its name. The competition known informally as the Pan-Am, was held December 27 to 30 in Princeton, New Jersey. Since the tournament began in 1946, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996, and then embarked on a five-year title streak from 1998 to 2002.

This year, the Retrievers tied for first place with 3 other Universities: University of Texas, Dallas; Webster University, which had 2 teams; and the University of Illinois. “It was an exciting finish. This was the strongest Pan Am in the history of the event. Twenty – three grandmasters as well as 5 teams rated over 2500 competed,” says Alan Sherman, Director of the UMBC Chess Program.

The UMBC team, all on chess scholarships, is composed of students not only with exceptional chess skills but also with strong academic records, Sherman says. UMBC requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA to maintain chess scholarships. The Retrievers last won the Pan-Am title in 2009, and took second last year. This year’s team will compete in the 2012 President’s Cup, the “Final Four of College Chess,” to be held in April 6-7, 2013 in Herndon, Va.

Earlier this month UMBC’s chess team was formally recognized on the floor of the Maryland State Senate and the House with a citation from Speaker Pro Tem Adrienne Jones (UMBC, ’76, psychology) UMBC Associate Vice President Lisa Akchin represented Dr. Hrabowski.

The UMBC team then played a friendly match with the members of the Maryland General Assembly Chess Challenge.

“It was a great experience to be recognized by the House of Senate and the House of Delegates. After being awarded we ended up playing for about two hours games with some of the senators, said Sabina Foisor, a member of the team and a graduate student at UMBC.

• Senator Ulysses Currie
• Senator Jamie Raskin
• Senator Bryan Simonaire

“We all had a good time and hope to be able to do it again,” said Foisor.

The UMBC chess team recently tied for first place in the Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, advancing to the 2013 President’s Cup, known as the “Final Four” of chess.

The UMBC chess team headed into the 2012 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship with a record nine titles to its name. The competition known informally as the Pan-Am, was held December 27 to 30 in Princeton, New Jersey. Since the tournament began in 1946, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996, and then embarked on a five-year title streak from 1998 to 2002.

This year, the Retrievers tied for first place with 3 other Universities: University of Texas, Dallas; Webster University, which had 2 teams; and the University of Illinois. “It was an exciting finish. This was the strongest Pan Am in the history of the event. Twenty – three grandmasters as well as 5 teams rated over 2500 competed,” says Alan Sherman, Director of the UMBC Chess Program.

The UMBC team, all on chess scholarships, is composed of students not only with exceptional chess skills but also with strong academic records, Sherman says. UMBC requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA to maintain chess scholarships. The Retrievers last won the Pan-Am title in 2009, and took second last year. This year’s team will compete in the 2012 President’s Cup, the “Final Four of College Chess,” to be held in April 6-7, 2013 in Herndon, Va.

Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins ’97, biological sciences, assistant professor of marine and environmental affairs at the University of Washington, is one off 126 recipients of the Sloan Research Fellowship, named annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, Jenkins received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2006 by pioneering a new field of study into the invention and adoption of marine conservation technology. Her research interests include: the theoretical and empirical study of the invention and adoption of marine technologies, especially bycatch reduction devices and tidal energy arrays; the study of the integration of “lay” expertise into scientific decision-making; and the study of gear substitution as a means to reduce bycatch and habitat impacts of fishing gear. Recent research includes studying the factors that cause fishermen to adopt, or not to adopt, equipment that can help sea turtles avoid being caught by fishing gear or cause them the least harm if they are caught.

Read a UMBC Magazine profile of Jenkins here.